by Alan Spencer
"It hurts bad, doesn't it?" Peyton said with no sympathy. "I'm doing this for your own good. Let it be a lesson learned. If you keep being so goddamn difficult, they'll turn you away, and I won't be able to help you. Pain will be all you know."
Peyton squeezed his damaged knee.
"You son-of-a-bitch! You fucking bast—ahhhhhhhh!"
Peyton kept scolding him. "Then if you're exiled, the cancer comes back, and off to death you go. I want to help you. I mean well. You're my best friend. Get your head together before it's too late. Really think about what I'm saying."
"Fuck you," Mark gasped. "You people are all mindless drones. This might be amazing, but it's scary to me. What do you have to do to stay here? What causes this to happen? Nobody will tell me. What does it mean to commit?"
Peyton began jabbing Mark's damaged knee with his pointer finger.
"Do you feel that?"
"Shit! Yes. God, yes, I fucking feel it! Stop!"
Peyton kept jabbing the knee over and over again, and the EMT held him down as Mark squirmed and fought the increasing pain. Callous, unrelenting, Peyton was a shadow of the man he knew. He was a goon. A pervert. A sadist.
"Don't take this place for granted. Enjoy what Meadow Woods has to offer you. Don't question it. It doesn't like us asking questions or reading between the lines. It is what it is. It's life. A beautiful life. Everything we didn't accomplish in life, we can do it now. I've learned so much about myself here. We bring our friends and loved ones here all the time. This community is constantly growing. We're cut off from the rest of the world. We don't matter to them, and we like it that way. So quit poking around and asking questions, or your cancer will come back, and this time, it'll kill you."
The finger kept poking and disturbing the shards of bone beneath the skin, and Peyton didn't relent until Mark passed out.
Dr. Albert was standing in the corner playing with a stethoscope, placing it on his own heart and checking for a beat. When the doddering practitioner noticed Mark had roused himself awake, the doctor played it off like he'd be doing something serious and walked to Mark's bed. Mark continued to receive blasts of radiating pain from his kneecap. He was tied down by leather bands on his legs and arms. Mark couldn't escape.
"Be calm, Mr. Tripdick. We're almost done here."
"You people are nuts. Whatever miracle's occurred, it's warped you people. Have you ever heard of too much of a good thing?"
Mark had no real concept of what he was talking about, but abating the warring nerves, it felt damn good to unleash words, any words, at high volumes.
Dr. Albert's demeanor remained calm. "You get a big enough taste of the good stuff, you'll understand our behavior. We've done nothing wrong. We're good people. We're deserving of a the good life. You're deserving of a good life too, Mark."
The doctor's hands clasped the shattered knee, and Mark watched as chunks of bone shifted under the skin. He even heard the bones crackle. "Goddamn! Stop, stop, stoooooop!"
"Not until we get one thing straight. Peyton tried to explain the situation and failed. So let me really get the point across. You start enjoying our gift to you, this blessing, or we send you back, and you will die. The cancer will eat at you just how it tried to eat at us. It's an injustice what happened to all of us. This place only aims to correct that injustice."
Dripping with pooling sweat, Mark managed to say, "W-w-what injustice?"
"Never mind that." The doctor squished the bones so hard, the sharp edges broke through his skin, causing his knee to look gnarly. "Now repeat after me. 'I will not...'"
Screeching, anything to stop the pain, Mark repeated the words, "I WILL NOT!"
"'...be blind to the blessings bestowed upon me."
"'...BE BLIND TO THE BLESSINGS BESTOWED UPON ME!'"
"Very good."
Then Dr. Albert held the knee softly, cupping it, and when he removed the hand, the damage was undone. To demonstrate the change, Dr. Albert bent the knee for him.
"It's as good as new again, Mr. Tripdick. The pain is gone. You can relax now."
The doctor dug into his white lab coat and extended a root beer flavored sucker for Mark to take. Twisting the sucker between his two fingers, he said, "Enjoy the blessings bestowed upon you. You're well again."
After Mark Tripdick left the hospital, Dr. Albert was reminded of how life used to be. The coldness of the morgue when he delivered dead patients to that infernal room. The powder on his wrists after surgeries from those cheap gloves. How he could see the eyes of the dead through the closed shutters of their eyelids, and their looks of accusation: why did you let us die? How the families could predict when he had bad news to give them in the waiting room of the hospital before he spoke a single word, and how they hated him for failing them, though they'd never say it to him directly, they'd still think it. He had failed them. They hated him. The white walls, the wall tiles, the whiteness of dead flesh, how he detested the color. White. The color of a body without a soul. Many times, Dr. Albert helped the morgue techs zip up those used up bodies, those white bodies, and handed them to the courier who transported them to the cemeteries. Those couriers were characterless too. White on the inside. So calm at death, unimpressed with the tragedy of life once lived now lost forever. They acted like they didn't know the dead stayed dead. Dr. Albert knew the dead stayed dead forever. He understood death's permanency. He never wanted to fail anyone ever again, or to experience those uncomfortable moments he endured as a medical professional. Whether it was someone's time to die or not, he wouldn't allow death to occur ever again. Dr. Albert didn't have to live down those fears anymore, because death didn't happen, not in Meadow Woods.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mark walked out of the doctor's practice wearing flip flops and the swimming trunks that somehow were bone dry. On his way out, he studied the hospital rooms. Grandmas and Grandpas were being escorted out of their sick beds, wheeled out in wheel chairs, only for the patients to step out and walk about unaided, happy and healthy, as children and their sons and daughters embraced them. The elderly were unhindered by sickness and age. In one corner, a woman he recognized as Amber Stalls was bald from chemotherapy treatments. Then in seconds, her hair grew from the follicles in long flowing strands of golden wheat. The gaunt body was filling out, the color of healthy flesh returning instantly. Amber's husband, Tim, was coming at her with balloons and cheering her on right before they embraced. Babies were born in rooms by women who'd long ago lost the ability. They simply wanted to keep bringing new life into the world. A woman in her eighties was cradling a newborn with joy on her face, having just given birth. Scraped knees, twisted ankles, dislocated bones, all of it was cured with little adieu. Crutches and oxygen tanks were discarded with pride and playful energy, as if those who once needed them enjoyed reliving that moment of going from sick to well again.
Mark didn't say a word.
He kept on moving towards the exit.
Mark wouldn't forget the pain he had endured, or who inflicted it upon him. As genuine as these people believed in what they believed in, Mark felt as a loss. This place was pointless without Elizabeth. The real miracle would be to bring her back to life, and according to everybody in town, the dead weren't coming back to life.
Away from the hospital, Mark thought about what Peyton did to him. He wanted to punch out the asshole. He deserved it for putting him through the pain, for being such a cruel bastard back in that ambulance. The act was a demonstration. Behave or be punished. Peyton believed what he did to Mark might straighten him out.
It did the opposite. He only had more questions about Meadow Woods. More defiance.
Who could he talk to that wouldn't hurt him, or mess with his mind?
Mark didn't know.
He was in the main part of town now. People were everywhere. Reyna Hawkins was painting self-portraits on the street corner. The portraits were flawless and so real. Her customers dumped wads of cash in her hands for the service. Derrick Collins was t
yping on his laptop in the bookstore window sipping coffee and entranced with the novel he was completing. Derrick had always been an aspiring fiction writer, though most kids called him an "art fag" and dismissed him as nothing more than an idiot who had his head in the clouds. Lindsey Jenkins, an aspiring wedding planner and overall socialite, a friend of Elizabeth's decades ago, was passing out flyers for the party this evening (one of which Mark received, a beer and BBQ cookout compliments of Chuck Flynn and The Brown Barrel Pub). Much more was happening all around Mark, but The Brown Barrel Pub was his intended destination. It was the dour face eying him through the front window that convinced him to come in. A sad face meant the person might tell Mark the truth about Meadow Woods.
Mark had forgotten he was only wearing swim trunks and sandals when walking in, and he was blasted with air-conditioning. A top-heavy bar maid handed him a tan shirt that read "I Drank The Entire Keg" across the chest.
"Hey, thanks."
"You're new here," she said, pointing at her chest at the nametag "Barbie." "I hear you've had it rough, Mark. It's hard adjusting, but you've come to the right place for help. Have a seat, cowboy, and I'll bring you whatever you like."
Mark watched her strut towards the bar wearing cut-off jeans so high he could shape the tight swoops of her buttocks. The meat. He imagined caressing it in his hands. He couldn't help it.
"Nice view, eh?"
It was the watcher in the window. The man named Gibbs. Gibbs had a first name, but Mark couldn't remember it. Gibbs was a hardened man. Grayed hair that was black on top, the whole package greasy and unkempt, as if he'd cut his hair himself with an oversized pair of scissors. He was nursing a shot, about to tip it back into his head. Gibbs pointed at the empty seat in front of him.
"Sit."
Considering those who were healthy and happy in this miracle town, Gibbs wasn't looking the part. The man scratched at his cheeks. Mark heard the audible scrape of beard stubbles. His breath stank of bourbon and an ashtray. A stubbed out nub of a cigar was smoldering between them in an actual ashtray.
"Mark Tripdick. So you made it back to Meadow Woods." Then the old man slugged back the shot. He enjoyed the burn for two seconds, then whispered to Mark. "They hate bringing up the dead, but when I saw you out there walking, I knew you'd be up for talking about your father. I miss the asshole. Care to share how the wild man met his maker? I was his friend, so I can call him an asshole. And don't tell me he let the cancer get to him. He wasn't the type to die in bed. Once you're down, you don't always get back up. That's what he always said."
Mark wasn't sure what to think of Gibbs's personal question.
"He did say that a lot, especially before he died. That very same line."
Barbie returned with a tall mug of pale ale. Mark didn't bother to ask how she knew what his favorite drink was. Mark thanked her for it, and he asked her how much he owed her. Barbie shook her head as if he were a dumb child. "You have a lot to learn, don't you?"
Gibbs shooed her away. "Don't give him a hard time. Nobody pays here, Mark. Everything's free. Don't sweat it."
Barbie returned to the bar.
"So why be a bar maid, or a barber, or a doctor, or a butcher, or anything if that's the case? If money's not necessary, why work ever? Why do anything?"
"Consider this, Mark. Barbie was a fat little kid. She was teased a lot. Couldn't work off the weight no matter what she did. Barbie threw up in the toilet. Ran ten miles a day, dieted, starved herself, but genetics got the best of her. But now she's here in Meadow Woods, and everything's different now. A friend of hers brought her here so she could survive death. Cancer, of course. It's always cancer. And now she's pretty, isn't she? She likes being a sex object. Barbie loves the attention. Slap her ass, she loves it. Imagine fucking her in the bathroom stall, she'll know it, and it gives her what I call the happy chills. Loves the attention from men because she didn't have it before coming here. She's getting what she wants, and she does her part in this town. Easy enough. Money doesn't matter. Personal desires do."
When Gibbs said "A friend of hers brought her here," it got Mark thinking again.
"How do you leave town? I'm asking because I saw a person cross the county line."
Gibbs slapped his palm against the table and then stomped his feet. "They got cooked crispy!"
"You could put it like that."
"If you know someone who deserves to be here, you can leave town temporarily to bring them here. This place knows your intentions. You can't lie to the place." Gibbs patted the copy of a book in front of him whose jacket was blank. "It reads you like a book."
"What does?"
Gibbs didn't care to say. He changed the subject. "Talk about your dad. What was he doing before he died?"
Gibbs kept the book under his flat palms, as if keeping it a secret.
"First, tell me why the hell there isn't a cover on that book? There isn't even a title."
Gibbs eyed the book. "I can't go the library anymore. Those stupid dirty bitches have taken it over. Old biddies won't let me in. It's for women only. What kind of bullshit is that? I'm a simple man, Mark. I just want to read, drink, smoke, and keep to myself. It's not asking much, not compared to what these other people require to stay happy."
"Wait, who has taken over the library?"
"Those goddamn women with their sex fantasies." He waved Barbie over to fill him up with another shoot of bourbon. "Books are precious to me. So much knowledge they contain, and I can't read them all. I can't get into that library. I did once, because I snuck in, and what I saw was disgusting. Those women realized what they did I thought was disgusting, and they shunned me." Biting the corner of his lip, "Those sick women."
"Go back to what I was asking you about earlier. What's the deal with your book?"
Gibbs waited for the bourbon shot to arrive. When it did, he slugged it back the moment Barbie placed it on the table. She left again, tending to another patron.
"This book is whatever I want to read at a given time. If I get bored of one novel, the words change, and it's a new one. This place knows me so well. This place wants me to be happy."
"Are you happy?"
Gibbs wiped the edge of his mouth and licked the bourbon off of it. "Happy enough. I'm not dead, and I've got my books." He dug into his pocket for a cigar. "Now about your dad. What was he doing before he met his maker? Please, tell me something about him."
Mark couldn't stop asking questions. "How are these things possible? Who's making them happen?"
Gibbs reached over to squeeze his shirt, losing himself to a fit of impatience. "Talk about your father!"
Mark almost pitched himself out of his own chair, he was in such a hurry to escape the lunatic. Gaining his balance, Mark raced out of the bar. When he hit the street, Gibbs's cries were hitting their peak, "This place isn't as great as it seems, but at least I'm not dead! And I've got my books!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sheriff Hildebrandt arrived at The Brown Barrel Pub to a dismayed crowd. Joseph Gibbs's outburst had disturbed the peace. Now the troublemaker refused to leave his corner table. A hush arrived when the sheriff stepped into the pub. An awe of reverence and respect overcame the patrons. His uniform meant serious authority. Control. He was in charge of cleaning up the community. Keeping it civil and a fun loving place. His authority didn't require a gun or even a beating stick. The uniform itself was enough. His position as a public servant, it commanded respect, and the sheriff got plenty of it. That respect bordered on fear.
The sheriff strutted towards Gibbs's table. The drunk man's stare froze on him, suddenly afraid. The man burst into apology. "I'm sorry, Sheriff. It's, it's just that I miss my old friend, and Mark's his son, and I thought it'd be okay if I asked him a few things, and I, I don't know. I lost control. I became impatient. I've had too much to drink."
"E-nough, Gibbs. I want you to walk yourself on out of here. Sit your butt down in your own home. There's a great liquor store down the road. Buy you
rself a nice tall bottle of whatever rot gut you choke down and move on. Am I clear?"
Gibbs moved on without question. The man collected his book and made his swift exit.
That's when Barbie and the other bar maids and patrons thanked the sheriff. He protected them. Made them feel secure. Because he was a public servant. An authority.
Everybody in the bar was so grateful for his hard work.
Preacher Linley intercepted Mark right after he hurried from the bar. The priest was a short man at five foot. He had a shiny bald head and glasses that gave him a smarter face than he deserved. The preacher was dressed down in jeans and a button-up long-sleeved shirt. The preacher quickly approached him.
"Well, it's Mr. Tripdick. Good to see you again."
"I have to get out of here." Mark feared Gibbs would be right on his tail. "Gibb is going to get me. Oh man, is he pissed. He was shouting at me. He's crazy."
Grabbing him by the arm, the preacher directed him across the street to the steeple church. "Follow me. I'll keep you safe. Gibbs would never enter a church. The drunk."
The preacher guided him into the comforts of the steeple. The inside clashed against the rugged exterior. Old paneling, faded stone, and stained glass that required restoration gave the church an abused look, but inside, the pews, the red carpet down the center aisle, the bronze organ pipes on the walls, and the tall rising ceiling (the vaulted ceiling so impossibly high), and the pulpit itself was covered in gold and artist renderings of the birth of Jesus, the renderings so realistic. So overwhelming.